Senior product designer at GIPHY. Takes photos, makes things move, & writes code. Father of kittens. Enjoys the great outdoors. Human Being in Brooklyn. Holds a Bachelor of Design degree from Penn State. This website is a collection of things that I'm mostly not working on while at work.

Self-E-Wear: the only VR headset with the power to show you how cool you look wearing a VR headset. Equal parts interactive art piece, futurist dance party, and waiting in line at Space Mountain. Designed and built from scratch, the team at Dark Igloo debuted it at F5 Fest at Terminal 5 in '15 to huge smiles and several noise violations. No one quite knew what to make of The Future.

We presented Self-E-Wear™ to the crowd as a fictitious company. No mention of Dark Igloo. Our product? The next level in self-centered technology. A headset with the power to show you a version of yourself so convincing, you'd swear it was REAL. A line formed as soon as the conference started.

Dated branding and collateral like this brochure set a strange mood. Costumed staff helped guests complete a Self-E-Waiver - Your answers help us get a better idea of what to show you. - and selecting from potential sequences like Haunted Lighthouse, Trouble On Mars, One Day As A Dog and Boobs. Almost everyone picked Boobs.

With the helmet on, a sequence of soothing images and music begins. Everything inside the helmet is projected behind the participant. “What's that we see behind her?” “Those are her thoughts.” “Oh! Interesting …”

Videos built in energy until … we flipped a switch. 90's cgi is replaced with a live feed of the guest, standing in front of a giant version of themselves, as happy music begins to play. The moment is met with pure joy.

The seed for this idea was a simple portrait project: put people at a tech conference in a homemade VR headset and take their picture. But inspiration took hold and we were soon thinking about logos, a strange instagram account, a website where people could download their portraits, how to build your own VR helmet, HDMI splitters, and whether Up In Here by DMX or Fantasy by Mariah gets people dancing faster. We'll do this again.